The invention relates to an installation for heating/ventilating or for air-conditioning of the passenger compartment of a vehicle, comprising a casing containing means for treating an airflow to be sent into the passenger compartment, the said means including at least one source of heat or of cold and changeo-ver-switching elements controlled in such a way as to define variable paths for the said airflow between an inlet and various outlets associated with respective regions of the passenger compartment, passing or not passing through the said source.
It is sometimes desired, for optimal and personalised comfort of the occupants of the vehicle, to send air into various regions of occupation, the temperature of the air being adjusted independently.
In particular, it is desired to be able to send air at independently adjusted temperatures into at least one region of the front seats and into at least one region of the rear seats. The known installations allowing adjustment of the temperatures in the various regions feature a hot-air channel situated between an upper cold-air channel and a lower cold-air channel. The upper channel and the lower channel open out respectively into an upper air-mixing region, supplying the front region of the vehicle with treated air by way of distribution ducts, and into a lower air-mixing region, supplying the rear region with treated air by way of rear ducts. FR 2 778 152 A describes such an installation.
This type of installation nevertheless exhibits the drawback of a slight interdependence of the temperatures of the various regions, the air being capable of circulating between the upper mixing region and the lower mixing region. Furthermore, such an installation, produced by the superimposing of three channels, is particularly bulky in the vertical direction. Moreover, the direct path formed by the lower channel prevents good recovery of the condensates formed by the evaporator.
The object of the invention is to allow completely independent adjustment of the temperature in different regions without increasing the bulk of the casing by comparison with a conventional installation including an upper mixing chamber, and allowing a good outflow of the condensates.
Another object of invention is to allow the sending to the windscreen of the air normally intended for the rear region of the passenger compartment, in the case in which rapid de-icing or demisting is necessary.
The invention especially envisages an installation of the type defined in the introduction, and makes provision for the casing additionally to contain at least one substantially vertical partition traversed by the said source and separating, from one another, two path elements passing through the source and connected respectively to a first outlet linked to at least one first region of the passenger compartment and to a second outlet linked to at least one second region of the passenger compartment.
Optional characteristics of the invention, which are complementary or alternative, are set out below:
a first region of the passenger compartment is the front region of the vehicle and a second region is the rear region of the vehicle;
the said partition extends substantially along a vertical plane oriented in the front-rear direction of the vehicle;
the said path element connected to the second outlet is delimited by two substantially vertical partitions separating it from two path elements passing through the source and connected respectively to a first outlet linked to at least one left-hand region and to a first outlet linked to at least one right-hand region of the passenger compartment;
each of the said path elements passing through the source is in parallel with a path element avoiding the source, the sharing of the air between these two path elements being undertaken by the changeover-switching elements;
the sharing of the air between the path elements passing through the heat source and avoiding it is undertaken by flaps each associated with one of the first and second outlets and rotating about axes which are mutually parallel or about the same axis;
the said source is a heat source and the path elements passing through the heat source and avoiding it are placed downstream of a common path element passing through a cold source and traversed by the whole of the airflow;
the changeover-switching elements comprise at least one shutter element suitable for shutting off the second outlet and for diverting the air flowing in the corresponding path elements to the first outlet;
the shutter element is suitable for diverting the air to the air-diffusion outlets of the front region via a downstream path element situated on the same side of the partition as the path elements from which this air originates, and extending parallel to the path elements connected to the first outlet;
the downstream path element is situated facing a de-icing path element connected to the first outlet, and at a distance from it.